yesterday
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Beautiful!!!
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They’re evil!
Today’s pickins. Oregon Springs will be ready soon, I have bacon. Sunflowers are growing in one of my bean pots. It’s been 6 years since I grew sunflowers. Bird seed?
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Two Dwarf Purple Heart tomatoes from the same relatively good-looking-for-late-August plants.
I don’t recall seeing anything like it on fruit in the past, but I may have had a virus that mostly effected foliage several years ago, and stink bugs leaving yellow spots are not uncommon.
How can I know if this is some virus?
I heard it usually effects the plant foliage and fruit might be brown inside.
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Here it is cut open; not ripe but otherwise not “unwell”.
Trying to decide if I should ditch the plant.
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I’ve been pulling out anything that looks blightish.
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Foil caps! For you and the figs!
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I’m sure that would not work here. I tried covering a native nut, chinquapins, with foil and the squirrels ripped it apart. It’s humid here, and poking holes in the foil will just allow more aroma out. Finally, there are raccoons, who can rip foil off like a candy wrapper. The same is true of opossums.
I used live traps, several of them, when a group of figs were bearing. Every morning, there was at least one critter in the traps, sometimes three.
With the chinquapins, I was after nuts to plant, so I made clamshell covers out of half-inch hardware cloth and used wire to close them up. That worked great, but it was a pain to do this on a ladder.
I bet one could construct a cylindrical or square protective basket-fence, using alternating electric fence “hot” wires and ground wires, spaced a couple inches apart. Any animal trying to climb would get zapped and hopefully give up. If there are multiple fruits needing protection, it’d be simpler to use electric fencing on the area or yard.
We have a new, non-native predator here in VA, coyotes. One was spotted on the property and I have hopes it/they will thin out the plague of thieving animals that have overpopulated here. It’s bad fore livestock and chicken raisers, but good for gardeners… … with luck.
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Oh well. They are “just” figs. I have more produce than I can manage. I’ll try to get my share.
Best wishes and good luck to you as well!
I’d love to know if you have any thoughts about this tomato fro the post a few days ago.
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That does look suspicious, possibly early stages of a relatively new virus which has been confirmed in CA, Tomato Brown Rugose Fruit Virus. Look for possible minor symptoms on the foliage. Here’s an article on the virus.
I don’t know if stink bugs transmit the virus, but it’s often spread by piercing and sucking insects.
Thank you!
First picture is all of the sugar snap peas that completely surprised me when I just tore up the plants today because they were all done for the season. Second picture I can’t take credit for, but I wanted to share with you this humongous mass of lettuce that came from a single head costing me 2.50 that was from a local market stand and that is the commercial treasure of my neighborhood. It will make 2x dinner salads feeding 4 each.
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…and today we’re picking Akane apples (aka Tokyo Rose). These also for the food dryer. They’re delicious, but not a good storage apple fresh.
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Our travel schedule this summer has led to me not seeing my upstate garden for three weeks. And thus…
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Akane is alone of our 3 varieties and the earliest to ripen. Ashmeads kernel in Oct and northern spy later than that.
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We bought the Akane as an afterthought, and primarily as a pollinator for a couple of Honey Crisp. Outside of the storage factor, we really like the apple. Good for eating out of hand if picked timely, and makes a great dried apple.
